Delicious Trap
A long time ago, in another comic involving adorable kitties, we touched on the subject of character flaws. There are systems out there that offer bonuses, extra build points, and free feats in exchange for saddling your character with traits like “phobic” or “addicted” or “chronic liar.” Today however, we’re talking about another class of character flaws, one that gets to the heart of contrasting playstyles. I’m talking about self-imposed disadvantages.
I started thinking about this topic thanks to Starfinder. I’ll be kicking off my first campaign in the system this weekend, and there’s an interesting rule stuck into the Ability Scores section:
The buying ability scores method makes sure that your character is always at least close to average—your race might push you slightly below the average of 10, but you won’t be severely hampered. Sometimes, however, it’s fun to play a character with a major flaw. If you want to reduce any ability scores for your character below what this system would normally allow, that’s fine—playing a brutish soldier with an intelligence of 5 or a noodle-armed technomancer with a Strength of 4 could allow for some fun roleplaying opportunities—but you don’t get to reassign those lost ability points elsewhere. Beware making your scores so low that your character can’t keep up with the rest of the party!
On the one hand, the optimizer in me recoils at the idea. What do you mean ‘noodle-armed technomancer!?’ Yeah, that sounds hilarious until I’ve got to drag my unconscious buddies out of a crashed starfighter. I don’t want to be a burden on the team! On the other hand, I’ve seen my share of by-the-numbers average Intelligence barbarians played like morons, and that always feels a bit off to me too. If you’re going to play to the stereotype, shouldn’t your stats somehow reflect the character?
For me, this internal debate epitomizes the agony of deciding whether to treat TRPGs like games or like simulations. Am I trying to make a character who’s best able to overcome challenges, or am I trying to use the rules to reflect a character concept? The answer to that question will likely vary between groups. That said, I don’t think that “irresistible love for baked goods” is going to break anyone’s campaign.
What do you guys think? Do you ever give your PCs self-imposed disadvantages? If so, what’s the rationale? Let’s hear it in the comments!
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“Irresistible love for baked goods” only becomes a problem when not roleplayed reasonably. I mean you’re not gonna stop for the donut when being chased by an angry dragon, right?
What kind of donut? And exactly how angry is the dragon? Could my Diplomacy check get a bonus if it’s accompanied by a gift of fresh donuts?
You ever see Rescue Rangers?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARqOxtNIMJ0
That would be “Irresistible love for baked goods: major.” I think I’d prefer “Irresistible love for baked goods: minor” in my games. Depends on how cartoony you want to go though.
(Another super-late comment, but – )
GODS BLESS YOU for the RR reference! Monty was the first thing that came to mind when I read this.
lol. I saw your comment on the back end first, where it was devoid of context. I thought we were talking about Monte Cook, and I was trying to figure out what RR meant in that context.
“‘Dragon’s Delve'” doesn’t start with an ‘R,'” thought I to myself. 😛
Happy New Year!
Actually, when I first started playing D&D I went through a phase where I couldn’t make characters with any Ability Score lower than 10. Seeing penalties on my character sheet drove me bonkers, even if it was for things that I was never-ever going to use. I wasn’t used to the group dynamic yet, and it took a little while for me to accept that my character didn’t have to be good (or even competent) at EVERYTHING, and that the system tended to award specialization.
Also, I got more accepting of deficiencies when I started to realize how much fun roleplaying could be. I eventually figured out that I prefer games where people don’t take themselves to seriously (grimdark is right out), and my favorite archetype became “someone who’s bad at something but doesn’t realize it”, which is always easy to inject a little levity with.
You ever see Trigun? It’s a solid little anime with a goofball of a protagonist. I bring it up because it’s my go-to for tone in RPGs. Most of the series is goofy shenanigans punctuated by moments of drama. I like to laugh when I’m running D&D, and flawed characters tend to allow for that.
I think I’ve heard of it 😛
Actually, I think I first saw some episodes when the it was being played on Cartoon Network. I wasn’t that into it, partly because I didn’t get the story and partly because I thought Vash was annoying, but that was also around the time I started getting into Anime in the original Japanese. And Trigun was one of the first full series I watched with that, and I actually enjoyed (most of) it. Nowadays I can’t watch dubbed anime at all, even good dubbing like Cowboy Bebop. I still like western cartoons in English, like DCAU, but dubbed anime just grates on my nerves for some reason. Kinda like ability-penalties used to. I dunnoh if there’s a connection there or something, or it’s just a facet of my personality that I have to have something to be annoyed with 🙂
Even the creators of Cowboy Bebop agree that the English dub is better. That’s the one place where dub is acceptable.
I’ve mentioned him before, but the Cowardly Sorcerer who used to be in my party deserves mention here. Interestingly enough, he was run by a self-admitted powergamer, and stat-wise I don’t think he was particularly bad (I mean, low STR and AC, but his HP was actually pretty good, what with Toughness and luck hit die rolls). However, he was deliberately played as an arrogant coward who would pull out strategies like “Use Summon Mount to summon a pony, hide behind the pony and shoot at the enemy with a crossbow” or “push the pony off a building so that it lands on the enemy.” The DM also basically banned him from trying to use Prestidigitation, because he tried to use it for EVERYTHING. The player openly admitted that he was roleplaying like this to keep his natural power-gaming instincts in check, and when things got serious he’d unleash his battlefield control spells until he was confident the rest of the party had things under control. The dice always seemed to go the way this player wanted (by which I mean either success OR hilarious failure) – as mentioned before, whenever he used his short sword (which he was not proficient in) he would ONLY roll 19s, 20s or 1s. While the character himself was annoying, he was certainly a more interesting partymate than a mechanically-identical “conventional” PC.
Also mentioned before, the Dwarf grappler Monk who dressed like a luchador and legitimately thinks he’s an eagle, despite all evidence to the contrary. Not only did he have INT 8 and CHA 8, but he didn’t particularly roleplay like a high-WIS character. Most notably the time an NPC in jail ‘tricked’ him into attacking our Sorcerer (I put tricked in quotes because the NPC didn’t even intend it – he was just denouncing the Sorcerer for stuff the Sorcerer had previously done) or when he ate a dead, formerly undead, rat and proceeded to contract a rare necromantic disease.
That’s a tough one with the monk. Differentiating Wis and Int is always a can of worms. You can make them synonyms if you play semantic hokey pokey long enough. For my money, I like to at least attempt to justify my stats with my RP. It’ll never be a perfect reflection (there are just too many numbers to keep in mind for every little action) but I think that the attempt helps make for a more fully realized character.
Well, at one point my table developed a saying: A low STR, low DEX or low CON player can easily roleplay a high STR, high DEX or high CON character. A low INT or low CHA player can roleplay a high INT or high CHA character without too much difficulty. But a low WIS player roleplaying a high WIS character is going to have a VERY hard time.
“I push the big red button.”
“Dude. Aren’t you a wise old monk?”
“Oh right. Good call. I punch the big red button. With power attack.”
“by-the-numbers average Intelligence barbarians played like morons”
I recall a story about one character that was played like that, communicating in a traditional Thog-speech… until the party came to the barbarian’s homeland. There it turned out that this PC was actually very eloquent, a true erudite – it just so happened that he didn’t speak common very well.
I might have read that one somewhere on Reddit. I think it was an ogre sorcerer or something.
“Of course Drook not speak Common good. It not Drook’s first language. Drook pretty good at Aklo, Boggard, Grippli, Halfing, and Drow Sign Language though!”
If you roleplay your optimization well, doesn’t it transform from optimizing to good characterization? A Low Int, Low Wis (since you don’t need it in PF), High Cha paladin makes a mistake about how their reception at the nobleman’s estate after they finish the mission, and it turns out they were patsies all along. Doing something after the inevitable escape like a couple minutes spent with a speech about how he can’t comprehend why they were betrayed, but he asks for the party’s forgiveness and grace in the wake of this error…that satisfies all conditions for having those stats without any worry of minmaxing.
In other news, I’ve given my characters low constitution before to make them waif-like and timid, but I soon learned that it’s kind of a bad idea if you want to play that character for a long time.
Finally, I think Barbarian, Magus, and especially Inquisitor-who-is-my-favorite are roleplaying exactly as they ought. No good Inquisitor eats food they didn’t bring until halfway through the meal. And Barbarian doesn’t care, she’ll soak it if there -is- something in there. Magus, of course, is in a devil-be-damned state and also doesn’t care for different reasons. I love it!
*reception will go
Stormwind Fallacy you say? Never heard of it. >_>
https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Stormwind_fallacy
And I promise, one day soon we will have that glossary of characters posted. Then it’ll be easier to distinguish Barbarian (who is in the anti-party) from Ranger (who is on Team Bounty Hunter).
Oh shoot, you’re right. It’s been so long since Barbarian actually showed up! I wonder what the comic will look like when the Anti-Party meets with Team Bounty Hunter.
Dude… She featured on December 8th and 18th. I’d love to have her in the comic more often, by you try getting a 7′ tall competitive bodybuilder/prima donna out of her trailer!
You know, I’ve read that Stormwind Fallacy before, and it didn’t cross my mind as I was typing that. Huh! Twice over, no less. I should probably wait an hour or so after waking up to respond to any sort of text with text.
After reading Konahrik’s input, that basically sorts the whole thing out. Silly games can afford silly characters, and grimdark isn’t going to jive with the table, and same with a floofadore in a serious more tactical game. Using that as a reference renders the line of questions leading up to the fallacy sort of moot.
What it comes down to is fun; you want to have a Orc who pushed past his races inherent -2 to Int and but has crap physical stats? Go for it, sounds like a funny character. But that’s the thing though, funny. If you’re playing a serious campaign that can cause problems. While it’s fun to make in these cases I believe it’s important to talk you your DM & group and ask how they feel about it.
It does remind me of a Lizardfolk that I made who wanted to be a Knight. Instead of a horse he rode a Giant Lizard and tried to be valiant and noble. His flaw though was, and I quote, “I want to be a knight but people are delicious.”. After the battle he’d tend to salvage the remains for a later meal and off them to others when they got hungry.
Neat character. I think it could work in serious games though. The poor lizard knight trying desperately to fight his baser urges… You could do a whole arc about whether or not he’s able to kick the habit.
My optimizer bits also recoil at voluntarily lowering my scores. Mostly because there’s not really ever an in character reason to be terrible at saving throws, because having a -4 to a save vs a -1 *is* going to be a burden on the party.
I dunno, it’s a tricky thing. Mostly I just roleplay characters the way I want to and build them the way my optimizing bits want to. So when it comes to “well clearly by my roleplay my character should be bad at this/can’t do it” I just go by that and otherwise am still capable of being not great but not incapable of all manner of other things that ability score encompasses.
Like just because I want a character who is absolutely no question about it incapable of lifting the barbarian over their head, doesn’t mean I also want a character incapable of not drowning while they try and cross a 6 foot deep river.
Abilities (in particular) and skills cover quite a lot of stuff and it’s a lot easier to just declare penalties or automatic failure on yourself when applicable than live with “well dang it, now my character can’t do tasks that actually DO fall within what I view their scope to be”.
Interesting. So if I’m hearing you right, you do self-nerf, but you do it via RP rather than mechanically.
I had a character set up for a 3.5 gestault pbp game who was a pixie, and one of my self imposed flaws was that she could not say something she knew to be untrue. This was a bit difficult since she was a beguiler with stupid high cha, high deception, and was a naturally conniving and devious individual.
Unfortunately the game died fairly quickly due to irl issues. I’d like to try the “deceptive fey who can’t lie” sometime again, but it’s much easier in pbp when you have time to think and carefully choose words, yet pbp is also frustratingly slow and tends to die easily.
I thought it would be a good idea to play a mute character once. I’d just read “The Stand,” thought that the mute protagonist was a cool dude, and tried to run with a whiteboard and dry erase marker. That lasted for about half a session.
Weird how some concepts work out better in your head than in practice.
I’ve read exactly one instance in which a mute character was done well, but that was in an exceptional party in an exceptional campaign played gloriously:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?247997-The-Big-One-Campagin-Log
So… Can I get a cliff notes version?
I give my PCs quirks and flaws that (hopefully) make them fun and interesting. My current character (Moon Druid) hides her voice and only talks to non-PCs when it is really important, giving her that “when she speaks, you listen” quality that really shone last session. My previous character was lewd and would always be ready with an innuendo. Sometimes they can’t sit still long, or they are perfectionists, or they are naive and nervous about the outside world.
What isn’t fun at all to me? Taking an ability score penalty in order to roleplay a character. You don’t need a -4 penalty on your intelligence checks to be a low-intelligence character, just don’t make knowledge checks; you don’t know and you don’t care. You don’t need a carrying capacity of 60 lbs to be weak, just don’t try to lift stuff or kick down doors; you know you couldn’t do it.
I consider the low ability score = good roleplay crowd to be fundamentally misguided roleplayers who haven’t taken the step of freeing their mind from the sheet. You don’t roleplay by taken every action available to you at any given time and hoping to fail more frequently. You roleplay by deciding what your character would or wouldn’t do in the first place. 4 Int Fighter up there doesn’t care to roll Arcana to identify the runes, they just keep on alert in case 4 Strength Mage manages to alert nearby enemies or cave in the dungeon with their arcane fiddling.
Digging that druid. She sounds like a cool dude.
As for the “low ability score = good roleplay” point, let me pick your brain a little further. If you are rolling up a Rincewind type PC who is conceptually a bit of a wimp, what is the “acceptable range” for a Strength score? In 5e terms, a 17 probably doesn’t fit. What’s the highest he could go before it begins to feel off?
She’s been pretty cool so far! We’re only two sessions in though. I’m sure there will be stories of her to come.
I think 8-10 is the ideal range for a low score. Combined with the way you set your skill proficiencies, and, as mentioned before, what you decide to do with them, you can effectively roleplay a weakness without crippling your character.
Nice. I’ll have to bring Druid back for another comic so you’ve got an excuse to share campaign stories. 🙂
I’m beginning to think that this characterful scores vs. effective character thing is a continuum rather than an either/or. We can agree that stats ought to (at least somewhat) reflect character. How much a given player is willing to give up for that feeling is going to vary. And since building characters is more art than science, I suspect that it’s a “what feels right to you” sort of situation.
I have wanted to make a character who is in a higher age bracket, but I have always been afraid of gimping my party in the process…
I like the concept of a flawed adventurer, but I think it would have to be something that the GM would have to give special consideration to.
Are you talking Pathfinder terms (e.g. Table: Aging Effects)?
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/alignment-description/description/
Venerable is a tough pill to swallow. I think that running a geriatric adventure could be hilarious, but that requires all players to buy in. Even there, you probably want some kind of boon for the poor martials to make up the terrible physical scores.
If someone brought a venerable character to a normal game, I couldn’t picture myself getting all “you’re a detriment to the team” hung up about it. Play smart, optimize a little, and you’ll still be able to contribute, you know? I guess that for me, there’s a lot of room to play with between “perfectly optimized” and “gimping my party.”
“Do I ever give my PCs self imposed disadvantages?”
I main Paladin.
YEAH! Good on ya. I was waiting for someone to bring that up. Druid and Barbarian and Monk also deal with alignment restriction issues, but none of them get treated so harshly as the dudes in shining armor. Kind of makes me wonder if I need to scold my druid players for non-neutral acts more often….
To be fair, in better editions they don’t have the same strenuous alignment restrictions.
In 4E it’s “You’re the champion of your god, match their alignment whatever it is”, and in 5E it’s you follow an Oath with the oaths relatively corresponding to alignments.
Granted I prefer the Oath of Devotion, which is the “Paladin Classic”.
Magus: [eating continues]
Inquisitor: You know those are going straight to your ass, right?
Rosc: [baking intensifies to dangerous levels]
Among Magus’s people, being a fat cat is considered a sign of success and prosperity.
Ah yes self imposed Disadvantages are always fun. One of my Characters is a Hothead, shoot First ask later Type, and he doesn’t think things through, yes he got averange Intelligence. If he would take his Time to think things through his Life Expectancy would rise dramatically. He just doesn’t. One doesn’t need a low Int score to be an Idiot.
The most importend is that the Disadvantages make the Character Fun to play, wherever they are on the Sheet or not.
It goes back to the last time Magus was embarrassing the team:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/frickin-laser-beams
RP your character until such time as people start throwing dice at you. At that point you might want to pull back on the shenanigans.
Well, i never got that far, but that particular Character has made my GMs chuckle more than once, and made my fellow Players facepalm more tahn once. 😛
It’s like making an awful pun. Normal jokes amuse your audience. Puns amuse the joke-teller.
I’m currently playing a fighter who was raised on heroic tales and tavern stories of dubious authenticity, so I have some fun with having her jump to conclusions based on fantasy tropes regardless of whether or not they apply – eg, her believing the party needs to decapitate or burn the bodies of people killed by zombies to keep them from rising as zombies, or meeting a goateed vizier and being convinced that he must be poisoning the mysteriously-ill ruler.
Occasionally I’ll intentionally flub History or Insight checks, too, when it’d make sense for the character (and not be irritating to the party). My DM’s a bit generous with letting people make History checks anyway.
Heh. I feel ya on the Vizier business:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/evil-facial-hair
Neat idea finding a way to pull your own genre savvy into the game world. That character must be a blast to play!
In a Shadowrun game a few years back we had a summoner who took a Minor pacifism disadvantage, and played it so strictly the GM would eventually changed it to the Major version. Since she ended up becoming the party leader, it trickled down to the whole team, and it changed the whole game.
Everything was planned around non-lethal takedowns, subterfuge, and keeping fatalities to an absolute minimum, it was a brilliant self-imposed challenge. And it meant that when we did have to resort to violence it was so much more fun and memorable. 10/10, would run with again.
My last Shadowrun group had trouble picking a plan and sticking with it. How did you guys deal with the added difficulty? Did it make planning the run take 2/3 of a session instead of 1/3?
I like to pair my nerfing with minmaxing and GM bribery.Yes, I talked the DM into giving me a magic item worth more than my total starting gold should be, but in my defense it’s useless in combat, and also my only other possessions are a mace and a shield. Sure, I took a rogue level in order to get a ton of skill pints on top of a homebrew feat that lets me improve my knowledge skills through downtime research, but I blew 26 of those skill points on picking up a ton of languages, including the nerly useless ones like aquan and auran. also he doesn’t know how money or oathbreaking works because he’s from the feywild. Yup, this definitely hopefully all balances out into a character that won’t break the party I hope.
Seriously, though, the best time the add a weird negative quirk is when you realize that your charachter is super cool but too OP, and that a weird character gimmick can make him less OP AND even cooler.